Up ahead a double trailer detonated. The eruption reverberated up through the frame of the motorcycle, and set off the trailer opposite, blocking their exit with a thick, black blanket of smoke. Luke leaned down onto the gas tank to make himself smaller, and Sophie did the same. “Hold tight,” he said as they disappeared into the blinding, cloud of billowing flames. The smoke was disorientating, and Luke thought that maybe they were already dead and this was hell, when a moment later they reappeared into the fresh air. He whooped as the last trailer erupted, pulled out onto the street, but knowing that other patrols would be along imminently, Luke sought the refuge of the riverbank once more. He steered a path back down a side street, rode up the embankment and back onto the towpath and when they were under the protection of a canopy of tree branches, he cut the engine so that they could catch their breath.
Sophie observed the flaming trailers from a safe distance in awe-struck silence. At least a dozen trailers were burning fiercely as was the wreck of the helicopter. “My God.” Sophie muttered unable to take in the scene. She dismounted from the motorcycle and went to a nearby clearing in the trees for a better view. “How did that helicopter find us so quickly?”
Luke clambered off the motorcycle and put it on its stand, but left the engine running just in case. He stretched and said, “Maybe a passing patrol got lucky. We’ll have a better idea of their response time after the next fire.”
He gazed around and saw that the river widened into a small marina containing half a dozen powerboats and one luxury cruiser. “What do you think?” he said, nodding at the floating time bombs.
She smiled in agreement. He climbed aboard the nearest powerboat and imagined for a moment what it would be like to take such a craft out onto the ocean and open it up. Luke fiddled around in the engine compartment, ripped out the fuel line and the gas pumped around the engine compartment. He repeated the procedure on the other powerboats.
“How much does a boat like this cost? “ Sophie asked as they clambered aboard the luxury cruiser.
“Quarter of a million bucks,” he said and set out to find the engine cover. “How the other half live, eh?”
“What on earth do they do for a living to afford something like this as a toy, — a plaything?” She said, frowning her disapproval.
“Nothing legal, that’s for sure.”
Luke smirked and held up a kilo of cocaine. “Look at this. There are probably twenty kilos of it. All the inland waterways make Florida so hard to patrol. This area has been a haven for smugglers since the days of the pirates.” He opened the engine cover and rummaged around, eventually found the fuel line, yanked it out and grinned.
Up in the cabin, Sophie switched on the gas rings of a portable stove, and then rigged up a cigarette lighter as Luke had shown her. She was about to close the door behind her when Luke pushed her back in. “Listen?”
She strained her ears and heard the distant sound of helicopter rotor-blades, and moments later, four Chinook helicopters hovering low overhead, then she remembered the impending explosion. “The gas,” she said.
“Wait,” he said, and then sighed as the choppers passed overhead in towards the trailer park. “Let’s get out of here.”
They disembarked from the cruiser and leapt onto the dirt bike, the rear wheel spewing up gravel in Luke’s haste to get away.
10:00 AM
The choppers prepared to land in a straight-line formation on the street outside the burning trailer park. The side doors popped open and soldiers emerged wearing camouflaged biohazard suits and climbed down before the choppers had landed properly.
A man of military bearing, wearing sunglasses stood with his hands on his hips and stared at the devastation. A growl emitted from deep within his throat.
The pilot of the following chopper recognized the man and choked. “That’s Jumpin’ Jack Malloy!” he exclaimed in surprise as they approached him.
“Jesus Christ!” said the co-pilot.
“Close enough. Although he was the last man to come back from the dead.”
“I thought General Malloy perished in the HQ bombing?”
“No such luck,” he moaned as they grouped around the general awaiting his orders.
The general snapped a sharp salute, which the enlisted men returned. “Who’s your highest ranking officer?”
“That would be me, General,” said a sergeant major, pushing through the mob. “What can I do for you?”
“I need your men to sweep this area for terrorists.”
“Begging your pardon, General, how do you know it was terrorists?”
The general glowered at him, and the sergeant major visibly quaked. “This is clearly the work of terrorists. If you were observant, son, you would know that the intensity of the blasts suggest that these trailers had been full of gas before they were destroyed. And a nearby house on the river was also reduced to rubble by a deliberate act of terrorism.”
“What does HQ say about this use of manpower?”
“There is no HQ, son. I’m HQ until further notice. Now, are you going to disobey anymore orders?”
“But we are needed—”
The boats erupting less than a mile away ended the argument as a column of thick, black smoke reached up into the scorching hot sky. The general whipped off his sunglasses and glowered at the sergeant major. “Why are you still here? Get after them!”
The luxury cruiser exploded and the ferocity of the blast wave blew Luke and Sophie clean off the motorcycle. Sophie stirred, checked herself over, wriggled her extremities and although battered and bruised she knew that at least no bones were broken.
The tumble stunned Luke. He massaged the shoulder that took the brunt of his spill, and counted himself lucky that he did not have the dirt bike up to full speed or their fall might have been a different story. Sophie looked at him with a worried expression on her face and he stuck up his thumb to reassure her that he was OK. He stood gingerly, testing the weight on his ankle. She limped over to Luke who tugged the dirt bike upright and started it. “Come on, we better get out of here,” she hopped on the back and the motorcycle sped away spewing up dirt behind the wheel.
11:00 AM
The Pentagon war room was in utter chaos. The digital revolution had made information instant and copious. No slow drip of intelligence like in the past, where they had time to assess the material. Now the intel was instantaneous and demanded attention. The back-room analysts could not cope with the overload, and accurate information was in short supply as the intelligence passed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff conflicted. The chiefs yelled at each other like school-kids, each wanted their branch seen to have discovered the answer, or failing that, and equally as important, that their branch of the armed forces did not face the blame, or seen on the wrong side when this was eventually over.
Each Chief of staff sat on the fence and agreed with each opposing argument, but above all else, agreed with the wet-behind-the-ears newly installed President, who got more and more paranoid by the hour.
President Hamilton Parker’s face showed signs of fatigue not the usual shiny, smiling visage he showed to the public, but lined, creased with worry and in need of a shave with a growth of stubbly gray hair. He cleared his throat, and tried to get the discussion back into some form of order.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, silence please,” he yelled from a video-link above their din. “Be seated and let me tell you where we’re at.”